Six Media Giants Now Control a Staggering 90% of What We Read, Watch or Listen to [Infographic]
June 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Note: This infographic is from last year and is missing some key transactions. GE does not own NBC (or Comcast or any media) anymore. So that 6th company is now Comcast. And Time Warner doesn’t own AOL, so Huffington Post isn’t affiliated with them
Hat Tip: Business Insider
Infographic Source: Frugal Dad
‘This is What a Dictator Does’- Beck Savages Obama’s Fiat on Illegal Immigrants [Video]
June 15, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Read the full article here.
Obama’s Big Economy Speech: No Hope, No Change
June 14, 2012 by 1 Comment
By Ben Shapiro | June 14, 2012 | Breitbart News
CFR & U.S. Army Chief of Staff: Use Army for Domestic Enforcement
June 11, 2012 by 2 Comments
By Joe Wolverton, II | June 4, 2012 | The New American
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) proposes that the U.S. Army be used to plan, command, and carry out (with the help of civilian law enforcement) domestic police missions. So says a story appearing in the May/June issue of the influential organization’s official journal,Foreign Affairs. The article lacks a single reference to the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits such actions.
In an article penned by Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, General Raymond T. Odierno, the CFR would see the Army used to address “challenges in the United States itself” in order to keep the homeland safe from domestic disasters, including terrorist attacks. Odierno writes:
Where appropriate we will also dedicate active-duty forces, especially those with niche skills and equipment, to provide civilian officials with a robust set of reliable and rapid response options.
As Commandos Raid Tampa, US State Dept Demands Power to Declare War?
May 27, 2012 by 4 Comments
By Anthony Wile | May 26, 2012 | The Daily Bell
Clinton Goes Commando, Sells Diplomats as Shadow Warriors … Clinton, wearing pearls and a silver and black blouse, climbed the stage and began to speak. And soon it all made more sense. She had an idea to sell — and to defend … She described a vision in which shadowy U.S. and allied Special Operations Forces, working hand in hand with America’s embassies and foreign governments, together play a key role in preventing low-intensity conflicts. And where prevention fails, the same commando-diplomat team goes on the attack … – Wired (5/24/12)
It happened again at the recent Tampa-based conference, “Building the Global SOF Partnership” …
The US military staged a mock drill in violation of 130+ years of the Posse Comitatus Act that bars domestic forces from active use on US soil.
Should Black People Tolerate This?
May 22, 2012 by 1 Comment
By Walter E. Williams | May 22, 2012 | CNS News
Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation’s population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it’s 22 times that of whites. Coupled with being most of the nation’s homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes, such as assault and robbery.
The magnitude of this tragic mayhem can be viewed in another light. According to a Tuskegee Institute study, between the years 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched at the hands of whites. Black fatalities during the Korean War (3,075), Vietnam War (7,243) and all wars since 1980 (8,197) come to 18,515, a number that pales in comparison with black loss of life at home.
Upcoming G8 forum and the objectives behind the looming Great War
May 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment
By Viktor Burbaki | May 11, 2012 | Russia & India Report
The world is entering a transition epoch, during which a big war over natural resources and spheres of influence, along with series of preceding regional conflicts, become a virtually inescapable.
The dynamics unraveling within the world system and driving deep transformations of the existing centre – semi-periphery – periphery layout is prone with a proliferation of serious armed conflicts.
This big war is looming on the horizon as the US is readying the scene for it in the Middle East. Far too many forces seem convinced that the war has to be the solution of choice to the lingering global crisis. In the meantime, watchers are trying to descern the objectives behind the brewing conflict. The first part of the agenda is not deeply hidden – the war should:
- help switch the attention of the Western population from the crisis to the fight against a “global enemy”;
- create conditions for writing off the sky-high sovereign debts;
- stop the US slide towards a new great depression, revitalize the country’s economy and give it a fresh start;
- re-institute the US leadership within the world system;
- perpetuate the existing financial order based on the broadly interpreted Washington consensus and the status of the US Federal Reserve as the global money-printing factory.
The same agenda, however, includes a taboo part – the plan is supposed to guarantee the survival of Israel which retains the occupied Palestinian territories and can only exist in the settings of permanent confrontation with its neighbors, provided that the West unwaveringly supports it and the Israeli military superiority in the region continues into the future. So far, Israel has had a potential to crash practically any coalition of Arab countries, while its regional nuclear-arms monopoly serves Tel Aviv both as a means of containment and a safeguard in case an armed conflict does erupt and takes an unexpected turn. Israel absent the enemies surrounding it – a small state with no natural resources on premises – is a picture impossible to imagine. The reason why these days Israel desperately needs a great war are:
- a military triumph would confirm Israel’s high global status;
- the outbreak of war would make it impossible for the crisis-ridden West, especially for the US, the country accounting for 22% of Israel’s foreign trade and known to pour an extra $3.71b into it in direct aid, to terminate or to considerably reduce support for Israel. It is worth mentioning in the context that Germany paid the last portion of compensations to Israel for World War II crimes in 2011. Under normal conditions, propping up Israel alone may seem too heavy a burden for the US;
- the war would put an end to Iran’s nuclear program and spare Israel any potential regional rivalry in the nuclear arms sphere.
The third and, arguably, the top secret part of the big war agenda is the rebuilding of the global colonial system.
Classic colonialism dominated the world for over five centuries and was partially pushed off the global stage only in the second half of the XX century when the USSR established itself as a world power. At the moment, one gets an impression that, due to the logic of the Western economic development, the brief post-colonial interregnum is nearing the end. Under pressure from competitors, the Western economic system is sustainable only as long as it can draw additional resources from the outside. It’s stability takes the existence of a subordinate periphery supplying the world system core at affordable costs.
The recent developments – from the seizure of Iraq and Afghanistan to the rape of Libya and the spill of the Arab Spring – leave no doubt that the world system periphery faces a new round of colonial conquests. The geopolitical process is likely imminent since a power capable of mounting serious opposition to it is completely missing in today’s world, and the only aspect of the situation that currently remains unclear is whether the revival of colonialism will follow a bipolar pattern, with the US and the EU securing a grip on the rest of the world, or some sort of an alternative colonization model is going to emerge.
The world subject to a new wave of colonization will see a sweeping re-codification of the international law and a full scale-demise of its former Yalta-Potsdam framework. The transformation will include a definitive departure from the underlying principles of the UN charter, the elimination, on an institutional level, of the permanent UN Security Council membership, and radical adjustments to the notion that sovereign countries should be treated as equal partners in international politics. In a not-so-distant future, occupation and colonization – if perpetrated in the confines of “recognized” spheres of influence – will be legitimized as substitutes for self-determination and sovereign nations’ rights to stay insulated from meddling. The West is already restoring the two-level format of the international relations which allows complete sovereignty exclusively to the countries belonging to the world system core and leaving the periphery with strictly the amount of decision-making freedom transnational corporations can painlessly tolerate.
Read the full article here.
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Michael Mukasey: Obama and the bin Laden Bragging Rights
May 6, 2012 by 1 Comment
By Michael B. Mukasey | April 30, 2012 | Wall Street Journal
It’s hard to imagine Lincoln or Eisenhower claiming such credit for the heroic actions of others.
The first anniversary of the SEAL Team 6 operation that killed Osama bin Laden brings the news that President Obama plans during the coming campaign to exploit the bragging rights to the achievement. That plan invites scrutiny that is unlikely to benefit him.
Consider the events surrounding the operation. A recently disclosed memorandum from then-CIA Director Leon Panetta shows that the president’s celebrated derring-do in authorizing the operation included a responsibility-escape clause: “The timing, operational decision making and control are in Admiral McRaven’s hands. The approval is provided on the risk profile presented to the President. Any additional risks are to be brought back to the President for his consideration. The direction is to go in and get bin Laden and if he is not there, to get out.”
Which is to say, if the mission went wrong, the fault would be Adm. McRaven’s, not the president’s. Moreover, the president does not seem to have addressed at all the possibility of seizing material with intelligence value—which may explain his disclosure immediately following the event not only that bin Laden was killed, but also that a valuable trove of intelligence had been seized, including even the location of al Qaeda safe-houses. That disclosure infuriated the intelligence community because it squandered the opportunity to exploit the intelligence that was the subject of the boast.
The only reliable weapon that any administration has against the current threat to this country is intelligence. Every operation like the one against bin Laden (or the one that ended the career of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. citizen and al Qaeda propagandist killed in a drone attack last September) dips into the reservoir of available intelligence. Refilling that reservoir apparently is of no importance to an administration that, after an order signed by the president on his second day in office, has no classified interrogation program—and whose priorities are apparent from its swift decision to reopen investigations of CIA operators for alleged abuses in connection with the classified interrogation program that once did exist.
While contemplating how the killing of bin Laden reflects on the president, consider the way he emphasized his own role in the hazardous mission accomplished by SEAL Team 6:
“I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority . . . even as I continued our broader effort. . . . Then, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community I was briefed . . . I met repeatedly with my national security team . . . And finally last week I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action. . . . Today, at my direction . . .”
That seems a jarring formulation coming from a man who, when first elected, was asked which president he would model himself on and replied, Lincoln.
Abraham Lincoln, on the night after Gen. Robert E. Lee’s surrender ended the Civil War, delivered from the window of the White House a speech that mentioned his own achievements not at all, but instead looked forward to the difficulties of reconstruction and called for black suffrage—a call that would doom him because the audience outside the White House included a man who muttered that Lincoln had just delivered his last speech. It was John Wilkes Booth.
The man from whom President Obama has sought incessantly to distance himself, George W. Bush, also had occasion during his presidency to announce to the nation a triumph of intelligence: the capture of Saddam Hussein. He called that success “a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq.” He attributed it to “the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator’s footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers. . . . Their work continues, and so do the risks.”
Read the full article here.
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Law Professor: Fox Anchor Wrong on Eligibility
May 4, 2012 by 4 Comments
Network host makes ‘common error’ about ‘natural born citizenship’
Attorney Herb Titus, who has taught constitutional law for nearly 30 years and was the founding dean of the College of Law and Government at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va., is offering a correction to Fox News anchor Bret Baier’s explanation of “natural born citizen.”
The issue arose this week when Baier posted online his explanation of “natural born citizen” and said that the issue is resolved by federal law. He pointed to 8 U.S. Code, Section 1401, contending all that is required is for the mother to be an American citizen who has lived in the U.S. for five years or more, at least two of these years after the age of 14.
The question arose in the context of concerns he was observing regarding the eligibility of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who was born before his parents were citizens of the U.S.
Baier asserted that people born in the U.S., born outside the U.S. to parents who are both citizens or born outside the U.S. to one parent who is a U.S. citizen are “all natural born U.S. citizens.”
Titus’ takes Baier to task.
“Bret Baier commits a common error,” he wrote in the response posted online at the Article 2 Superpac. “He assumes that ‘natural born citizen’ means the same thing as ‘citizen by birth.’ They are not the same. A citizen by birth is one who by constitutional or statutory provision is made or recognized as a citizen based upon where or to whom they were born.”
He continued, “Under Mr. Baier’s view, a natural born citizen, then, is a citizen of a particular nation only by positive law. If a natural born citizen is defined by statute, as Mr. Baier claims they are, then by statute Congress can take away their natural born citizenship status, subject only to the 14th Amendment’s definition of citizenship by birth. And even that citizenship can be taken away by an amendment to the Constitution. Indeed, according to Mr. Baier, no one could have been eligible to be elected president UNLESS Congress passed a statute designating one’s citizenship by birth, or until the 14th amendment definition of citizenship by birth was ratified.”
The issue has been in the news since Barack Obama campaigned for president in 2008. Questions about his eligibility have yet to be resolved, as he’s continued to conceal many personal documents.
The birth documentation from Hawaii that Obama released from the White House last year has been described as a probable forgery by the investigators of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse.
And if it’s not fraudulent, there are critics who say it proves his ineligibility, as it lists Barack Obama Sr. as the father, who never was a U.S. citizen.
Titus argues the father’s citizenship is important.
“A natural born citizen, by contrast, is not dependent upon Congress passing a statute or the constitution being amended. A natural born citizen is a citizen of a specific nation by the law of nature of citizenship. The law of nature of national citizenship is written into the very nature of the universe of nation-states, and is universal as to place, uniform as to person, and fixed as to time. By definition the law governing natural born citizenship exists independent of any human power, legislative or otherwise. That is why ‘natural born citizenship’ is not defined in the Constitution. Such citizenship exists whether recognized by positive law or not. Such citizenship is God-given. To qualify one must be born to a father and a mother each of whom is a citizen of a particular state in order for the person to be ‘natural born’ citizen of that state,” he explained.
Earlier, when Baier’s statement first was posted, Harvard-educated Jerome Corsi, author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?,” said Baier wasn’t quite on track.
“Baier incorrectly interprets that 8 USC Section 1401 was written to define ‘natural born citizen,’ as specified in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution,” he said. “The purpose of 8 USC Section 1401 is to define ‘nationals’ and ‘citizens’ of the United States ‘at birth.’”
Corsi explained that citizens at birth are not “natural born citizens” under the meaning of Article 2, Section 1.
“Nowhere in 8 USC Section 1401 does Congress make any mention of the term ‘natural born citizen’ or to Article 2, Section 1,” Corsi said.
See all of those who have made statements about Obama’s eligibility, in The BIG LIST.
Baier, who took over the time slot from Brit Hume in January 2009, previously was the network’s chief White House correspondent. Prior to that he was national security correspondent, reporting on defense, military and intelligence community issues. He has reported from Iraq 12 times and from Afghanistan 13 times.
He said he posted the information because of the questions being raised about whether Rubio and Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal qualify as “natural born citizens.”
“This is obviously getting a lot of attention … so we think we should do a full piece on the show about it … and maybe have a panel of constitutional scholars … and legal experts to discuss this,” he wrote.
“There obviously is a lot of confusion.”
He said, “The brouhaha over President Obama’s birth certificate – has revealed a widespread ignorance of some of the basics of American citizenship.”
Corsi agreed.
“To novices, the distinction between ‘citizen at birth’ and ‘natural born citizen’ may be trivial. Under law, the distinction is meaningful and important. A mother who takes advantage of ‘birth tourism’ to fly from Turkey or China (or any other foreign country) to have a baby born in the United States might arguably give birth to a ‘citizen at birth,’ under the meaning of the 14th Amendment, extended by 8 USC Section 1401,” Corsi said.
Read the full article here.
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Bill Whittle: Memebusters – The Osama Bin Laden Edition [Video]
May 3, 2012 by 1 Comment
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- The Bin Laden Letters (aangirfan.blogspot.com)
- Osama bin Laden saw opportunity for al Qaeda in the Arab spring. (althouse.blogspot.com)
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The Meme War We Must Win
April 18, 2012 by 4 Comments
By streiff | April 18, 2012 | RedState
If you think Ann Romney and Seamus the Dog aren’t important you don’t belong in electoral politics.
In the past week the presidential campaign has been hit by two events that many have termed silly. First there was the Hilary Rosen comment denigrating Ann Romney’s decision to stay at home and actually raise her children rather than elect to have a stranger do that. Second was the softer Seamus-on-the-roof story rolled out by the Obama campaign yesterday.
Many, especially our own “smart set”, have criticized the attention these events have attracted as somehow taking away from the high minded policy discussion that is supposedly taking place.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Since Mitt Romney has become the presumptive GOP nominee we’ve seen two broad lines of attack opened against him. The first is “Mitt is an out of touch rich guy.” The second is “Mitt is a Mormon and Mormons are very, very strange.”
The closest they have come to making a policy attack on Romney is criticizing him as a conservative. How this is supposed to hurt him is anyone’s guess as the major knock on Romney during the primary was that he wasn’t conservative.
Both the stories on Ann Romney and Seamus the dog are designed to build a meme portraying Romney as a plutocrat, some sort of latter day (nyuk nyuk) J. P. Morgan. For instance, the recent Paul Begala article in The Daily Beast refers to Romney as Thurston Howell III:
And I mean elite. In Mitt Romney the Republicans have the apotheosis of wealth worship. Romney has amassed a fortune so vast he is expanding his $12 million beachfront mansion and installing an elevator … for his cars. For his cars, people. If you’re insanely rich, you might have an elevator in your mansion. But a lift for your Lexus? Keep in mind he’s running for office, for Pete’s sake. What’s he going to do if he wins? Use orphans as human golf tees?
[…] So far Romney has had a case of Marie Antoinette Syndrome. Every time he tries to connect with a middle- class voter he makes the Grey Poupon guy look like Joe Lunchbucket. He brags about his friends who own NASCAR teams and NFL franchises. He casually makes $10,000 bets. He says the $374,000 he made in speaking fees isn’t a lot of money. When a kid gives him an origami duck made out of a $1 bill, all he has in his pocket to replace it are hundreds.
Romney apologists will say I’m taking this out of context. Baloney—or rather, Wagyu filet mignon. The context is that Romney truly is out of touch [my emphasis] , and middle-class voters may conclude that he is not on their side.
Read the full article here.
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Leaked Video Shows US Contractors Randomly Killing Civilians [Video]
April 12, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Hat Tip: The Intel Hub
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Dumb As A Rock: You Will Be Absolutely Amazed At The Things That U.S. High School Students Do Not Know
March 28, 2012 by 1 Comment
Staff Report | January 10, 2012 | End of the American Dream
Are we raising the stupidest generation in American history? The statistics that you are about to read below are incredibly shocking. They indicate that U.S. high school students are basically as dumb as a rock. As you read the rest of this article, you will be absolutely amazed at the things that U.S. high school students do not know. At this point, it is really hard to argue that the U.S. education system is a success. Our children are spoiled and lazy, our schools do not challenge them and students in Europe and in Asia routinely outperform our students very badly on standardized tests. In particular, schools in America do an incredibly poor job of teaching our students subjects such as history, economics and geography that are necessary for understanding the things that are taking place in our world today. For example, according to a survey conducted by the National Geographic Society, only 37 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can find Iraq on a map of the world. According to that same survey, 50 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can’t even find the state of New York on a map. If our students cannot even find Iraq and New York on a map, what hope is there that they will be able to think critically about the important world events of our day?
Sadly, almost every survey or study about high school students that gets done shows that most of our students are not even receiving a basic education.
For example, the following comes from an article posted on MSNBC….
Just 13 percent of high school seniors who took the 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress — called the Nation’s Report Card — showed solid academic performance in American history.
Read the full article here.
From UN Immunity to License to Defraud
March 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment
By Claudia Rossett | March 24, 2012 | PJ Media
One of the most pernicious features of the United Nations is its diplomatic immunity. This is what lets the UN and its floating world of assemblies, agencies, diplomats and international staff get away with everything from running up $18 million in Manhattan parking tickets, to indulging in corruption, waste and abuse that carries no real penalty, even when outed in the press, or exposed in congressional hearings. When private companies embezzle millions, it’s a reasonable bet — at least in the U.S. — that someone will face charges, and maybe do jail time. When more than half a dozen major UN agencies involved in the UN’s Oil-for-Food program in Iraq stuffed their own administrative coffers with hundreds of millions of dollars meant to buy relief supplies such as medicine and baby milk, no one faced prosecution. The worst they got was an official tut-tut, and instructions for the agencies — including, for instance, UNICEF, the World Food Program and the UN Development Program — to cough up a small portion of the money.
True, diplomatic immunity has a time-honored place in important matters of actual diplomacy (though at the UN, even that devolves quickly to such outrages as the annual visits of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Manhattan). But a great many of the more reasonable-sounding aspects of the UN have been over-run over the years by the astounding spread and sprawl of its globe-girdling bureaucracy. What began as a talking shop for diplomats in 1945 is by now a neo-colonial global empire, with its own envoys, outposts, and amorphous initiatives, moving money, personnel and equipment across borders, spending well over $30 billion per year of other people’s money — and draped in immunity. No big surprise that the UN is a chronic incubator of waste, fraud and abuse, which periodically erupts into scandal when details seep out. Yet pathetically little actually gets done about it, and very rarely is anyone punished.
All this makes UN-style immunity a highly attractive commodity. It’s a de facto license to fiddle and defraud, if you can get it.
Read the full article here.